Zoho Day 2026 – Unification, Not Fragmentation
- Blair Pleasant
- 6 hours ago
- 5 min read
At its Zoho Day analyst event in Austin, TX, Zoho marked several key milestones. The company celebrated its 30th anniversary and reported more than one million paying customers and 150 million users. For a privately-held company with a long-standing emphasis on engineering over marketing, these figures reflect sustained growth at scale.
Strategic Context
Vijay Sundaram, Chief Strategy Officer, outlined the trends shaping Zoho’s strategy:
AI has moved from experimentation to operational deployment.
AI is accelerating innovation—and raising expectations.
Best-of-breed buying has created application sprawl; organizations now seek consolidation and a single system of record.
Spending is under scrutiny; value is increasingly tied to measurable outcomes.
Systems of record, APIs, and infrastructure layers have become strategic assets.
Sundaram argued that AI and agentic systems are reshaping the SaaS model. Under traditional SaaS, economic, security, and operational risk shifted from customer to vendor. With AI and agentic systems, elements of that risk shift back toward customers—particularly as they design, train, and deploy their own agents.
Customers are no longer just users of predefined workflows; they are designers of behavior. As control increases, so does responsibility. Organizations must determine whether they are prepared to manage that risk.
Zoho is approaching these changes in several ways:
· Maniacally focusing on value, by building a model that delivers value while giving customers the freedom to customize
Serving as the corporate system of record, providing context, permissions, and governance for AI.
Driving customization through platform approach that allows customers and partners to build applications within a unified ecosystem.
· Enabling massive automation with AI/agents
The objective is to expand customer control without increasing operational exposure.
Addressing Fragmentation
Mani Vembu, CEO – Zoho Division, highlighted the core problem of enterprise software: enterprises run too many disconnected applications, systems are difficult to change, and each new tool often adds complexity rather than reducing it. The best-of-breed procurement model has led to fragmented architectures, overlapping vendors, and limited incremental value.
AI amplifies this issue. Without unified systems, shared data models, and consistent knowledge structures, AI outputs are costly and inconsistent.
Fragmentation exists at three levels: applications, middleware, and data. Users must navigate multiple systems, and IT retains limited centralized control. Vembu noted that mid-to-large enterprises average roughly 275 SaaS applications, while IT directly manages only a subset. Fragmentation, he argued, ends when software is designed as an integrated system rather than assembled from components.
AppOS
To address this, Zoho introduced AppOS, a unified business application operating system.
AppOS provides:
A shared data foundation.
Common business and process models.
Built-in workflows and automation.
Identity, permissions, and governance by default.
Applications are built natively within the platform rather than integrated after the fact.
Key implications:
Data is structured consistently across applications.
Business rules execute uniformly.
Teams retain application-level control within centrally enforced standards.
Applications can evolve without architectural rework.
For customers, this translates to reduced time to value, lower total cost of ownership, and predictable governance.
Vertical Integration
Zoho is also pursuing vertical integration across the technology stack. The company operates its own operating system, database (optimized for GPU workloads), internally developed LLMs and SLMs, and is developing proprietary hardware (details remain under NDA).
This “delayering” approach spans:
User experience
Orchestration and execution
Software infrastructure
Hardware infrastructure
By controlling the stack, Zoho aims to improve cost efficiency, performance, and data sovereignty. It also enables tighter integration between AI models, data, and applications.
Zoho manages its own data centers and supports cloud, hybrid, and on-premises deployments—an increasingly relevant capability as data sovereignty requirements expand globally.
In a discussion on AppOS and vertical integration, LSP Chandrasheka, Managing Director, Zoho Canada, described Zoho’s evolution from a platform foundation toward horizontal applications in HR, finance, and other domains. He explained that AppOS, once released, will serve as a platform layer that exposes core capabilities to partners and system integrators, enabling development of industry-specific solutions.
Zoho CX
Within customer experience, Zoho emphasized orchestration across teams and workflows. The company’s CX focus includes:
Unified CX work orchestration across customer-facing teams.
Native, embedded AI for contextual intelligence.
Personalization across stakeholders.
A system of execution aligned to operational workflows.
Modular architecture.
Solution-oriented pricing.
To get more insights into Zoho CX, I spoke with Dlip Nagarajan, Head of Product, Zoho CRM, and PVK, Head of Market Strategy, Zoho CX on CX Strategy
Cliq
Zoho Cliq, the company’s team collaboration application, supports messaging, chat, voice and video calls, and meetings, didn’t get much attention on the stage, but is a key application for many customers.
In a discussion with Shathantha Laksmi, Senior Marketing Analyst at Zoho, she noted that Zoho’s focus was on deeper AI integration into collaboration workflows. AI capabilities are being embedded directly into user workflows to act as proactive assistants. Zoho has also expanded workflow automation and unified related capabilities within the platform.
Customer Perspectives
Customer sessions remain a core element of Zoho analyst events. I had the opportunity to speak with two customers who shared their experiences at the event.
Newcross Healthcare Solutions
Mo Umerji, Head of Enterprise Architecture, described Newcross’s use of Zoho One applications, including CRM, Creator, Recruit, Analytics, Campaigns, DataPrep, Expense, Desk, FlowMail, People, Sign, Survey, Contracts, Vault, and Cliq.
Umerji emphasized that AI augments users rather than replaces them, noting “AI isn’t a replacement for a person. It’s about giving the user more power and more information to improve how they operate and how quickly they can do things."
By building its healthcare application (Karivo) on Zoho Creator, Newcross can keep their data secure and centralized while reducing costs.
Integris Credit Union
Jeff Anderson, Vice President of IT, discussed Integris Credit Union’s use of Zoho applications, including CRM, Analytics, Directory, Expense, Cliq, Projects, Vault, Desk, Flow, SalesIQ, Campaigns, Assist, Bookings, DataPrep, Mail, Calendar, and Forms.
Following a merger, Integris needed to integrate 30 applications, including Zoho and its in-house core banking system. Anderson explained that Zoho Analytics provides visibility into member behavior, churn, asset and loan aggregation, delinquency, and portfolio value.
Key Themes
Several themes emerged:
· Platform over portfolio: Zoho is positioning itself as a unified application platform rather than a suite of loosely connected tools. With AppOS serving as the architectural foundation providing unification, rather than fragmentation, Zoho makes it easier for customer and partners to build custom app or customize existing Zoho apps using the same coding tools, with everything built on the same foundation.
· Verticalized stack: By controlling hardware, infrastructure, database, operating system, and AI models, Zoho improves cost efficiency, optimizes performance, while better supporting data sovereignty by design. Zoho is in a unique position, as most competitors can’t provide this full stack at the cost and efficiency of Zoho.
· Embedded AI: AI is integrated into the platform rather than layered on top. Internally developed LLMs and SLMs can be trained and deployed for specific customer requirements, with an emphasis on efficiency and latency control.
· Data sovereignty and deployment flexibility: With owned data centers and support for cloud, hybrid, and on-premises models, Zoho addresses regulatory and geographic constraints.
· Customization at scale: AppOS is intended to enable customers and partners to build vertical and team-specific applications using a shared foundation.
Zoho’s goals for the event were to:
· Strengthen its enterprise story year after year
· Provide a clear understanding of the customer outcomes they want to create
· Share its vision and strategy during this volatile, fast-changing time
Based on what we heard at the event, the company succeeded in these areas.
